Account-Based Marketing: Our Last Best Hope

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Mark Godley, CEO of LeadGenius, is a C-suite ‘startup junkie’ with a depth of experience in B2B sales and marketing. LeadGenius provides a combination of technology and human intelligence at scale to help global revenue teams by producing rich, actionable data on an ongoing basis. LeadGenius’ global team of researchers, combined with data science, delivers customized lead generation, lead enrichment and data hygiene services. Data powered growth.

ABM is not dead—it is the Little Black Dress of sales strategies. The problem with ABM today it that the implementation often falls short. Sales and marketing should be working together to identify that segment of the universe they believe provides the best product-market fit. Instead of coordination, marketing departments use ABM simply to target their dollars. Meanwhile, reps are being cut out of the sales process, writes, Mark Godley, CEO of LeadGenius.

A couple of months ago, I decided that the next time someone asked me what I thought about Account-Based Marketing (ABM), I would lay it on the line:

No, ABM is not dead. Far from dying, it’s damn near immortal. As a means to target the addressable market, it’s the best approach we have.

ABM is the Little Black Dress of sales strategies. It’s the implementation that falls short. Sales and marketing should be working together to identify that segment of the universe they believe provides the best product-market fit. Instead of coordination, marketing departments use ABM simply to target their dollars. Meanwhile, reps are being cut out of the sales process.

ABM may be our last best hope for influencing the sales process, but only if we ditch the hype and get back to the time-tested approach to selling.

Technology Changes Everything

It really is true. Wait long enough and everything comes back in style. In the antediluvian, pre-Internet world—back when I carried a bag—we targeted our sales and marketing efforts.

We didn’t call it Account-Based Marketing, but we knew that by understanding our audience, especially existing customers, we could identify our best prospects—those companies most likely to benefit from what we were selling.

With precision targeting, we had targeted outreach efforts that served our customers and prospects while helping to offset what even then were the rising costs associated with direct sales. If only we could have done it at scale…

It wasn’t long before the Internet and marketing technology gave us cheap access to what seemed like an endless volume of prospects. We could reach out and touch everyone and snag massive numbers of leads in our marketing nets to be sorted and qualified later.

Companies gladly traded quality for quantity. But eventually, the bill comes due. Just as offshore fishing nets are environmentally destructive—killing millions of dolphins, porpoises, and whales as part of the unintended bycatch—so too is big net marketing technology turned too many leads into corporate bycatch.

We’ve pissed off audiences with our spray-and-pray tactics. Reps have lost control of the sales process and sales efficiency is down the tubes.

It’s a world turned upside down. In 20 years, we’ve gone from a time when sales drove the buying process to today when buyers have complete control of the steering wheel.

Let’s face it, buyers are so firmly ensconced behind the wheel, you may never regain control of the sales process. At least with ABM as the backbone of your go-to-market strategy, direct sales can get a hand back on the wheel.

Making ABM Our Go-to-Market Strategy

Although I still don’t use the term Account-Based Marketing, the needs of our addressable market are at the heart of everything I do.

The first pillar of my go-to-marketing strategy is to eliminate distractions. It’s why one of the first things I do in a new company is slash the databases down to a manageable size. I cut, chop, de-dupe and when necessary, delete. I’ve dumped whole databases—millions of records—to eliminate distractions and keep reps focused on our target market. At every company I delete records, I’m seen as a heretic until the productivity gains prove out the pruning some months later.

I don’t care how good a rep is, it takes a lot of nurturing to grow and service an enterprise account. Target accounts need careful management. When I learned that our top sales rep at LeadGenius had more than 200 accounts, I put the second pillar of my strategy to work. I told him we were cutting his accounts to about 20. He blanched, but after some reflection, he agreed that even 20 accounts were enough for him to cover his quota a few times over. We redistributed 185 of his accounts across the sales team. And not only is he having his best year ever, but our clients are also better served as a result. Everyone is working more effectively, and we are doing better as a company.

While I can be a bit of a heretic about sales, I never lose sight of our addressable market. It’s my third pillar. Right now I’m contemplating moving our salespeople out of a market segment that we’ve sold very effectively in the past and represents close to 20% of our annual revenue. We have the technology, but I’m not convinced we have the domain expertise. We want to find business partners who are a better fit with this market then license the LeadGenius technology to them. We're willingly giving away a sizable portion of our revenue from this market if it’s in the best interest of our customers.

What’s Next?

I actually expect the future of ABM to be stronger than ever. For one thing, new technology will improve our capacity to target more precisely at scale. We’ve always known that at any given time only a subset of our addressable market is in a buying window. The challenge has been how to identify that intent and receive alerts when a company is in the buying window.

Armed with tools to predict when a buying window is opening up at a particular company, sales and marketing can precisely target their message at scale without needlessly over-targeting the rest of their addressable market.

And speaking for all the over-targeted buying audiences that endure a daily tsunami of vendor disruptions, we’re about to get our revenge. With the strategic use of buyer technology, we can keep the sales and marketing dogs at bay.

Based on my own experience, I can say that alternative search engines, call blocker apps and ad/pixel blockers empower me. I can read and research products in stealth mode and control outside access—even though every vendor in the country has my cell phone number. I believe that within five years phone outreach will be dead and Buyer Tech, my prediction for the next big thing, will supersede Martech for control of the sales process.

Fasten your seat belts; the road ahead will be bumpy as your buyers are looking to eject you from the sales cycle. A well-thought-out Account-Based Marketing strategy might be your last best hope in staying relevant.